


memories burn like firewhisky

by wolfofwinterfell



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Firewhisky, Grief/Mourning, Memories, Severus Snape is Draco Malfoy's Godparent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-14
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-22 14:54:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30040410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wolfofwinterfell/pseuds/wolfofwinterfell
Summary: Grief is a complex thing.
Relationships: Draco Malfoy & Severus Snape, Minerva McGonagall & Severus Snape, Narcissa Black Malfoy/Severus Snape
Comments: 5
Kudos: 15





	memories burn like firewhisky

It was cool down in the dungeons. Minerva McGonagall pulled her cloak tighter around her with a slight shiver, as if being warm would help her to steel herself, and reached a hand out to the door before her. She held her wand in her other hand in case she needed it; the last time she had been down to this office it had been sealed with spells and, while she suspected they had fallen when the wizard who’d cast them had died, she knew the castle worked in mysterious ways. Perhaps it had wanted to keep prying eyes out and resealed itself, and she would have to figure out how to break through. 

“Get on with it,” she muttered under her breath, irritated with herself for hesitating. She pushed lightly and, to her surprise, felt the door move. It creaked as she opened it further, being unused to activity, and she stepped into the dimness a moment later. The door closed behind her of its own accord. 

The silence left behind was nearly overwhelming. 

She wanted to open the door again, to leave this room and everything in it and not step foot in it again until it was somebody else’s office. But she knew that that was foolish; to her, this would always be Severus’s office. 

With a quiet sigh, she cast  _ lumos  _ and walked toward the end of the office to light the fireplace, and once that was done, she looked around at the walls. Something would need to be done with all of the jars of specimens and potions lining the shelves. Perhaps the new potions master could use them? She dismissed the thought almost as quickly as it had popped into her head. The staff could keep these all here or they could move them to another place, but nobody would actually  _ use  _ anything— even if it were labeled. Severus would not have stood for it. 

The books would be easy. The paperwork in his desk would be harder, though not impossible; that was just a matter of finding time amongst all of her other duties. The process of rebuilding the school was underway and going well but it  _ did  _ require a lot of time. Other professors had offered, gently, to take care of this for her so she could focus on the reconstruction, but she had refused. Severus had been her friend, she’d told them. She owed it to him to do this herself. 

She turned back toward his desk and pulled back his chair, lowering herself to it as though moving in slow motion, and froze. 

A glass with a few sips of firewhiskey left sat there, left atop a pile of parchment filled with that ever-so-familiar handwriting. A fknot jumped into her throat, and she felt her breath catch. If she didn’t know any better, it would have looked like he had just left the room and was coming back at any time, ready to go back to whatever it was he had been writing when he’d left. She bent her head to try to look at the words and found her vision blurred with tears. 

It was difficult to admit, after the Battle of Hogwarts, how much she had missed him over the prior year. How she had hated him but missed the man she had known. 

A month, she had thought, was enough time to leave everything. She could compartmentalize everything enough after that to do what she needed at the end of term. 

But looking at the glass again, picturing his hand holding it, she knew she had been wrong. 

It had been a long month, full of triumphs and defeats in so many areas of life for all of them, and it had felt like so much longer than it was. But at the end of the day, it hadn’t been long enough for this. 

She wiped tears from her face as she stood and put out the fire, composing herself as she stepped back into the corridor. Nobody needed the office yet anyway, she reasoned with herself. 

Excuses weren’t necessary. 

The firewhisky was reason enough. 

* * *

If Draco Malfoy had ever expected to be in the dungeons again at Hogwarts, he hadn’t told anyone. He glanced around himself, glad that nobody else seemed inclined to come down here now, and stepped toward the door he knew better than many of the ones at home. He cleared his throat and raised his hand to knock before remembering that he didn’t need to do that anymore. Would he ever get used to that? He almost hoped not, he mused as he slipped into the room. 

“Hello, sir.” He spoke to the empty room, acknowledging the professor he knew wasn’t there. But that was easier than saying nothing at all, and he could hardly handle the silence. “I’ve just come to borrow a couple things.” 

He didn’t bother to light his wand or the fire; he didn’t need light in here to know where he was going. The bottom right drawer of the desk would have what he was after, and if that was empty, the bookcase to the left would do. 

His steps echoed loudly on the floor and he flinched at each one, hating the sound of them unaccompanied by the scratching of a quill on parchment or a stern voice. They were too much, just like the rest of the bloody day. How many times had he come in here before and never noticed? He’d always thought he walked quietly enough to not disturb Severus. 

The bookcase was empty. That had been what he’d expected, but he’d decided to check there first on a whim. When he moved to check the desk, he sat and looked straight down at the drawer for a moment before testing it slowly. It opened easily to reveal the bottle of Ogden’s he’d known would be there, along with three glasses. 

He poured himself three fingers worth, not caring that it was more than he would usually start with. After his day of helping the staff welcome students he needed something, and he was in no mood to go down to Hogsmeade. His presence here was part of his agreement to try to make amends and seeing most of the staff’s reactions to him had been more than enough to convince him to stay in. 

“Well, cheers.” He held his glass up in an imaginary toast before taking a sip, not caring about savoring the flavor at all, just wanting the blissful dullness that would come after a bit. The drink burned as he swallowed it, the warmth of it spreading through him briefly. By the time he’d reached the end of his glass, heat was gathering in his chest. 

After pouring more, he settled back in the chair and turned to look out from the desk. How many times had he sat across it over the years, looking back at Severus? Listening to him, talking to him: learning, yelling, screaming, crying. 

His heart seemed to constrict and he took another drink. 

He noticed the glass on the desk as he lowered his own again. It was still as clean as if it had been taken out earlier in the day, complete with a bit of firewhisky still at the bottom. It sat atop a pile of parchment; a quill was beside the stack as well. Even in the dark Darco recognized it as his godfather’s favorite. 

“You thought you’d be coming back, didn’t you?” Another drink. “Or hoped, at least. Like the rest of us.”

Draco ran his finger over the quill gently, noting as he did so that he was starting to feel the alcohol. But rather than the dulling sensation he was after, he was feeling  _ more _ . The ache in his chest wasn’t going away. On the contrary, it was  _ worse _ and he couldn’t tell if it was the drink or his regret that was causing it. 

He paused at that thought, glass midway to his mouth. He hadn’t acknowledged that before, but he knew, deep down, that it was part of why he couldn’t move on. It was part of why he couldn’t seem to be the slightest bit happy, when, by all accords, he should be over the moon to still have his freedom - such as it were. 

“Every time I yelled at you, pushed you away, you had to have been so...angry.” He looked around the room again, a place where he had spent so much of his early time at Hogwarts, and felt his eyes begin to prickle. “You were trying to help me the whole time and I just...couldn’t accept it.” 

He sat his glass upon the desk, next to the other, and put his head in his hands.

* * *

  
The grounds were covered in snow when Narcissa Malfoy arrived at the gates of Hogwarts on the ninth of January. It was beautiful, as always. She’d often said that some of her favorite memories from school were in weather just like this. She and her friends would take a walk through their favorite paths and then gather inside for hot chocolates before going to study, in Narcissa’s case. It was snogging for the rest of them. But she would curl up in her bed, or in the library, making sure she could glance out the window at the whiteness outside and enjoy the quiet. 

These days she wasn’t sure whether she liked the weather more or less than she had back then. 

She was still contemplating it when she got up to the front doors to the castle.

“Good morning, Mrs. Malfoy.” Minerva McGonagall was waiting for her just outside. “I apologize for not meeting you at the gates; I was responding to letters and lost track of time.” 

“It’s quite alright, Headmistress. I enjoyed the walk.” She wasn’t fooled by the words; McGonagall would have known the exact moment of her arrival, but had figured— and rightly so— that she would not want company. “Thank you for letting me come.” 

“Of course. It’s quiet without the students back yet, so you won’t be disturbed by anyone.” McGonagall turned to go inside. “I’ll show you down to his office and leave you to it.” 

Even with the warning, Narcissa was taken aback as they entered the castle. She had always gone home during breaks while she was at school and in her memories, the school was always bustling - at least until the war. There were plenty of people, after all, still left on the grounds - professors, any of their visitors, and the students who stayed behind. But now it felt different. Haunted, in a way, and that unsettled her. 

Neither she or McGonagall said another word as they made their way through the Entrance Hall and to the narrow staircase that led down to the dungeons. From the foot of the staircase, they walked halfway down the passageway, and then McGonagall stopped.

“Here it is,” she gestured, and then turned to Narcissa. Her tone was gentle. “We’ve left it alone.”

Narcissa nodded at her, not trusting herself to speak, and waited until she was alone in the passageway before slowly opening the door. She realized, as she shut it behind her, that this was her first time ever stepping foot in his office. That even though she had known him for most of his life, she had never actually _seen_ him as a teacher beyond the little glimpses she’d gotten when he tutored Draco at home. But that, she reasoned, was part of being his godfather, and didn’t really count.

She looked around at the walls first, noting the hundreds of jars that lined many of the shelves. It was an impressive collection, albeit slightly eerie. Were these from his research? Did he brew the various solutions or just buy them? Stupid question, she scolded herself. He’d definitely brewed them himself. 

She walked along the walls first, fingers trailing the shelves, imagining him putting each vial up. Did he use any of these in class or were they just for his personal research? Were any of them things he’d brewed for the death eaters? Did any of it even matter? He was gone. 

She turned away from the shelves at that thought, looking toward the desk instead. Two of the books she had used as her excuse to come here lay on top of it, along with some parchment and a glass of what she knew had to be firewhisky. Her lips lifted in a small smile at that. 

There were some things that never changed. 

Quietly, she moved to the desk. The glass still had enough left in it for a few sips, which meant he must have been interrupted before he finished it...or didn’t care if it was gone, had just needed to steel himself for what was going to be coming that night. How was she to know? 

She sank down into the chair behind the desk. 

How was she to know anything anymore?

Had she known who he was? Who he  _ truly _ was? Or did she only know whatever parts he’d made up to play his part as a spy? Was anything he had let her see genuine? Had he even really cared for her? 

She picked up the glass, watched the liquid in it move with every motion, and was surprised to feel her cheeks growing wet. 

_ Is this what you’ve come to now? Crying over lies from a man you swore you didn’t have feelings for?  _

But if he’d lied, so had she. 

It was just supposed to be a friendship, she’d told herself so many years ago, and that had worked, for a while. But then, things had changed.  _ Life  _ had changed. Lucius had gone to Azkaban, but her relationship with Severus had begun sooner than that, and had lasted. Lucius hadn’t minded, not really; he didn’t care about much, in the end. 

Lucius had lost many things in the war; his reputation, money, his spirit, and essentially his family. 

But Narcissa thought he may have gotten the better end of the deal. 

He hadn’t lost what felt like a piece of his soul when Severus had died, and Narcissa was sure that that had happened to her. 

She looked to the glass again and thought of the many times she’d seen Severus pick one up, sipping the amber liquid. He’d done so at meetings with the Dark Lord, during dinner parties, after a night in bed with her. His mood hadn’t mattered. She had known how much he would take, that he wanted it neat. That after he drank, when she kissed him and tasted it on his lips, she wasn’t sure if the burning she felt was from the alcohol or from Severus himself. 

She knew he didn’t like to drink until he was drunk, but he knew his alcohol and knew what he liked. She knew how little he slept most nights, intent on getting his thoughts about potions or spells out, his quill scratching over parchment long after she had pulled the sheets over herself and called a quiet “goodnight” over to him. She knew that when he was enjoying something he was reading, he’d bite his lower lip and lean over the pages, as if getting closer to them would somehow make them understand how he felt. She knew that had worked on her, those nights when he’d done the same to her. 

She knew what his hands felt like; calloused from the work with his potions and long hours holding a quill, but nimble and quick. She knew what he sounded like, lost in passion. How he looked when he did sleep, how he tied his cravat. She knew he was an excellent baker but a hopeless cook, which made her laugh considering his mastery of potions. 

How could you doubt if you knew a person, knowing all of that? 

“Oh, Severus. I miss you,” she murmured softly, setting the glass down and wiping her eyes. “Happy birthday, I suppose. Forgive me if I don’t feel like celebrating.” 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to all the lovelies on the Snauthors discord for your help in this. I appreciate you!


End file.
